A newer version of J. River Media Center is available.
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Features
- Editor's Rating:
- Average User Rating:
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Downloads:
236,525
- Requirements:
Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
- Limitations:
30-day trial
- Date Added:
July 20, 2005
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Previous Versions:
Publisher's description of J. River Media Center 11.0
From J. River:This one-stop, media-management application turns any Windows PC into an entertainment hub for complete control over your digital media. It connects your PC to your stereo, TV, remote-control device, digital camera, TiVo, UPnP device, PSP, iPod, and other portable MP3 players. It plays all media, and it rips, burns, and organizes your music, images, and videos. Media Center encodes and plays all popular media formats and has powerful utilities, including Media Server for streaming music and images to remote PCs. New features include user-customizable split views, the new Library Browser view, and enhancements for easier burning, tagging, and handheld syncing; support for integrated music stores, such as Audible; a new image editor; and VideoCD playback. Other features include CD and DVD burning (audio, video, and data); encoding (MP3, WMA, OGG, and APE formats); and support for TV recording and time shifting.
Version 11.0 features a new database caching layer that makes many parts of the program significantly faster.
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Editor's review of J. River Media Center 11.0
5.0 stars
- "A full-blown multimedia powerhouse"
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User reviews of J. River Media Center 11.0
- Average user rating: 3.8 stars out of 174 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 12 user reviewsSee all 12 user reviews
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10 out of 10 people found this review helpful
Version: J. River Media Center 11.0
"It's awesome library management make it the ONLY choice if you have a large lbry"
Pros: Library management features (views, smartlists and playlists) make it very easy to manage a large collection of files and it's much faster than other programs I've used. The command line interface and the support for Promixis' NetRemote product makes it easy for the technophobe to add comprehensive remote control support. They say multi-zone support is very good too though I don't personally use it. The program shines in just about every other area too e.g. playback quality, tagging, supported file formats, ripping, burning. Other features like 'Clean file properties', 'Rename files from properties' etc. might sound like something you would find in many other jukebox applications but in MC believe me these functions are very 'feature rich', which is why this software is the best choice for the serious 'power user' and home theatre pc enthusiast.
Cons..(sorry not enough room in cons field so starting here)
It's a very powerful toy but the downside to this is the learning curve. Most basic features can be sussed out easily enough with a little perseverance but much of the application's power is difficult to unleash unless you are very tech savvy or you are happy to spend time on their forum (daily) asking questions and learning about new features. Lot's of useful new features do not make it into the help file for many months, or even years and some do not get a mention at all.
Although the company use the slogan 'All media - one interface' it's not the best choice for all media. FLAC and MPC audio formats are not properly supported and MC's DVD playback features are poor compared to the more established DVD players. There are many better applications for storing your photo collection too. IMO MC is best used for music (WMA, APE, WAV, MP3 and some other formats) and this is where it blows the competition out of the water.
Cons: No support for freedb, only it's own proprietry db called YADB. YADB is increasing in size and where data is found the quality is good but it's low user base compared to freedb means that the newest cd's are often not found. This applies especially to users outside of the US or with a taste for non-mainstream music. If this affects you I would use another application for tagging (there are many around) before importing your data into MC - it's not a good reason IMO not to use the software due to it's many other great features.
The user forum used to be well managed and lively but there have been a lot of problems there over the last 12 months and it's no surprise that there are disgruntled users around (and believe me there are many of them). One or two of these have been driven to dislike a certain company representative so intensly that they will go to great lengths to make sure others know about it and the reasons for it. There is documented corroborated evidence available on other websites that bring into question the ethics of the forum admin. One example (seen numerous times) is where people's posts have been edited without reasonable justification (e.g. there was no flaming, swearing or defamatory remark) and it's not been made clear to the original author or other readers that the authors words have been changed. However, IMO this is not good reason to 'cut your nose off' and not use the software. Indeed the forum still does a good job of providing answers to straight-forward support 'How do I...' questions, which is what it's there for. Just be very careful before you criticise the software in any way or ask a question about certain 'taboo' subjects as you can expect to be handled very direspectfully.
It's a shame that download.com put 'cons' after 'pros' because I always like to think it's best to finish on a positive note so I'll finish by saying... If you are serious about building a large music collection on your computer J. River Media Centre is the best choice you can make by far.
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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
Version: J. River Media Center 11.0
"Media Center has one of the most flexible librarys available."
Pros: enthusiastic "pro" comments relate mostly to audio files.
If your audio files number in the tens of thousands, this is the only organiser you should consider.
Once your files are correctly tagged, you can use this data to present your files in just about any way you can imagine. You are not locked within the constraints of the default library fields either, as you are able to create any number of custom fields and then build view schemes around them. this freedom can take a little bit of getting used to, you have to scratch the surface quite hard to discover all the options available to you.
If you use dual display (monitor + TV fx.) the ability to send the full screen display to the secondary display is neat.
there is audio/data cd/dvd burning
there is a small choice of online services to choose from (if that kind of thing lights your fire)
handles playback of most media filetypes, though you may find you need realmedia and quicktime codecs installed. (google for alternatives if you don't fancy installing those)
I too feel the "cons" section here should come first as in the case of MC, it doesn't feel right to end on a negative note, it really is very good at what it does, even if the jriver business model seems a little "different", and if you get stuck, the support forums are a mine of information despite the draconian censorship of the administration.
Cons: Mention has been made of Media Center "phoning home"
All such discussion on its forum is stifled (read deleted or locked). As far as I can tell, all internet based features are directed through a redirector at musicex.com. the url passed there contains your MC version number. As the version number makes no difference to the final destination, I can only assume jriver use this data statistically. It's my opinion that by actively stifling any discussion on the subject, they are only adding fuel to the fire. If nothing underhand is going on why not be more up front about such things?
For the record, I am of the opinion that there is nothing more sinister than version statistics gathering going on, certainly, it's not reporting the contents of my HDD back to jriver (just the artist/track details if I ask for "artist info" as we only get to amg via musicex.com. example:
www-dot-musicex.com/cgi-bin/internal_pages/redirect.pl?type=ArtistInfo&prodname=Media%20Center&version=100213&command=Artist%3dPaul%20Weller%26Album%3dTell%20Me%20More%20(The%20Other%20Side%20Of%20Stanley%20Road)%26Title%3dBroken%20Stones
Media Center does not respect exif data in image files. Any edit you make will destroy these tags. Using the built-in image editor will destroy all metadata for that file, including the proprietry tags.
tagging tasks take place in the background meaning you can continue using MC after starting the task. there is a problem in there somewhere involving the fact that the changes are applied to the database immediately, and then the files are brought synced with the database in the background. If you attempt anything that involves a tag update on files still in the previous job queue, you will run into problems. My advice is not to perform any tagging tasks on files that are playing, or likely to be played, while the current job is in progress.
The next version will undoubtedly tighten things up, but, when/if any bugs like the above are fixed, be prepared to have to pay an upgrade fee to receive the fix.
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8 out of 11 people found this review helpful
Version: J. River Media Center 11.0
Pros: It's gotten better and it's now probably the best all-around app there is. But it's annoying that the little things (too many to mention) don't get added.
Cons: The developers are passionate, but they have some serious faults: the only support forum is run by them and they will modify or delete posts without mention. It's a shame they don't appreciate the importance of free information exchange. I think they censor because they're fearfull of the bototm line. Some users remind me of cult members. Overall, I love the program (at least I love what it could become) but the company leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: J. River Media Center 11.0
"If you have a large music collection, this is the BEST that you can get!!!"
Pros: The software can do basically EVERYTHING!
Burning CDs with fading!
The easiest way to change tags!
The most suffisticated filters ever!
Picture, Video Database include!
Absolutely awesome!!!
Cons: There are none!
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Version: J. River Media Center 11.0
"Use it and you'll never leave it"
Pros: Does almost everything within one program - and does it well. There's nothing in the market that comes close to this program. Use it and you'll be addicted.
Cons: An older version of this program allowed you to sync the "album artist" field of your music files to the "artist" field that the IPod uses. It was a very useful feature.
Apparently there are programming difficulties in supporting this function in newer versions. That's too bad as this was VERY useful.
Of course, it's not too much of a Con because it's not like there's an alternative. No other program (that I know of) supports this feature.
- See all 12 user reviews Write review
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